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Since we have posted a few guidelines on what NOT to do when designing moves, I figured I would make a guide on what to do. For the sake of example, I'm going to be doing a walkthrough of
1) A new move for an existing element
2) A new subelement and moves for that.
1) ADDING TO AN EXISTING ELEMENT
I'm going to use WaterWave as my example here (now available in Beta 10+).
First off, you need sources. The best sources are (in no preference), the show, MC masters of that element, what could be done if you could bend this element IRL, and whether it can be coded in Java. The show option is not limited to TLA or LOK.
So after a few looks around on the show, you find these scenes:
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b216/alorrainea/spam/avatar/687.jpg
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa202/KylieGurl17/Avatar/pakkuwatersurf.jpg
And since it's not in, we can conclude this move would be a good call. For this particular move, it enables higher movement for waterbenders, and can be used both offensively and defensively, lending to their fighting style.
Now that we have a move outlined, we design its features. What are its limits and capabilities? What aspects will be in the config?
For the WaterWave example, we can conclude that
1) In the show, it's seen that the wave can either be ridden as pure water, or can have water cast ahead and then frozen and slid on. As seen in the plugin, we went for the riding water option here.
2) This move noticeably speeds up a waterbender, rather than just haul them. What speed would this be in default? Even though all of these features can be changed in config, most people won't bother, so we need to design these base, vanilla values, to what we think would be fair.
3) Is it really needed anyway? Epitomized for Concept Designers in our (lengthy) arguments about this, anyone could say this feature isn't needed because of fast swimming for waterbenders, and also because waterbenders can throw themselves with surge.
Once all of these points can be concluded, a move has been designed. You now need to name it, and bribe a friendly Developer to code it for you. NOW FOR THE NEW SUBELEMENT GUIDE
2) NEW SUBELEMENTS
This one is hard to do using canon bending, so I'm going to arbitrarily make up a new subelement of something: Lightbending! The ability to bend light.
First off, any good sub element needs a move for offense, defense and utility. However, this varies per element. For example, fire has a weak defense, so the defense move there might be able to be used as an offensive move up close (WallOfFire). Water is known for its switching of offensive and defensive styles, so you need to personalise that basic "set" of 3 to fit the element.
In this case, Light is not known for its harmful ability, so our Offense move will simply be a huge blast of light which doesn't necessarily damage, but can cause Blindness and Nausea effects, and possibly a rare chance of setting them on fire. Good names for this style of move could be
Dazzle
Brighten
LightBlast (for the desperate)
After setting some basic values for this (see above tutorial), we now work on Defense.
How exactly light is defensive isn't easy here. You can't make a wall of light, after all. So we need to be a little more creative... For example, there are offensively-defensive moves (moves that defend you by attacking them for you. FireShield, LavaFlow, etc, non-direct attacks). Alternatively, you can try moves that simply get them really far away from you (doesn't really work here), or moves that prevent them from attacking you very well. For light, we could have a move where the bender removes all light from the opponents area, leaving them blinded and in the dark! :O
Next we have our utility. Definitely the easiest of these to configure, just think of something that would make normal, non-bending, vanilla MC much easier to do. For light, a passive where the player glows all the time would be pretty useful. Or alternately, a move that creates a hovering ball of light that follows you around above you. The possibilities here are huge.
Since you now have your safe 3, you now do a test mentally. "Could this sub-element stand in a fight and at least hold its ground for a while?" If the answer is a definite yes, this is too powerful. Tone things down. If a definite no, it's too weak. If an uncertain yes, you've hit gold. The elements are designed to be equal, and none more powerful than others.
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT.
I hope you find this tutorial useful <3
Since we have posted a few guidelines on what NOT to do when designing moves, I figured I would make a guide on what to do. For the sake of example, I'm going to be doing a walkthrough of
1) A new move for an existing element
2) A new subelement and moves for that.
1) ADDING TO AN EXISTING ELEMENT
I'm going to use WaterWave as my example here (now available in Beta 10+).
First off, you need sources. The best sources are (in no preference), the show, MC masters of that element, what could be done if you could bend this element IRL, and whether it can be coded in Java. The show option is not limited to TLA or LOK.
So after a few looks around on the show, you find these scenes:
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b216/alorrainea/spam/avatar/687.jpg
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa202/KylieGurl17/Avatar/pakkuwatersurf.jpg
And since it's not in, we can conclude this move would be a good call. For this particular move, it enables higher movement for waterbenders, and can be used both offensively and defensively, lending to their fighting style.
Now that we have a move outlined, we design its features. What are its limits and capabilities? What aspects will be in the config?
For the WaterWave example, we can conclude that
1) In the show, it's seen that the wave can either be ridden as pure water, or can have water cast ahead and then frozen and slid on. As seen in the plugin, we went for the riding water option here.
2) This move noticeably speeds up a waterbender, rather than just haul them. What speed would this be in default? Even though all of these features can be changed in config, most people won't bother, so we need to design these base, vanilla values, to what we think would be fair.
3) Is it really needed anyway? Epitomized for Concept Designers in our (lengthy) arguments about this, anyone could say this feature isn't needed because of fast swimming for waterbenders, and also because waterbenders can throw themselves with surge.
Once all of these points can be concluded, a move has been designed. You now need to name it, and bribe a friendly Developer to code it for you. NOW FOR THE NEW SUBELEMENT GUIDE
2) NEW SUBELEMENTS
This one is hard to do using canon bending, so I'm going to arbitrarily make up a new subelement of something: Lightbending! The ability to bend light.
First off, any good sub element needs a move for offense, defense and utility. However, this varies per element. For example, fire has a weak defense, so the defense move there might be able to be used as an offensive move up close (WallOfFire). Water is known for its switching of offensive and defensive styles, so you need to personalise that basic "set" of 3 to fit the element.
In this case, Light is not known for its harmful ability, so our Offense move will simply be a huge blast of light which doesn't necessarily damage, but can cause Blindness and Nausea effects, and possibly a rare chance of setting them on fire. Good names for this style of move could be
Dazzle
Brighten
LightBlast (for the desperate)
After setting some basic values for this (see above tutorial), we now work on Defense.
How exactly light is defensive isn't easy here. You can't make a wall of light, after all. So we need to be a little more creative... For example, there are offensively-defensive moves (moves that defend you by attacking them for you. FireShield, LavaFlow, etc, non-direct attacks). Alternatively, you can try moves that simply get them really far away from you (doesn't really work here), or moves that prevent them from attacking you very well. For light, we could have a move where the bender removes all light from the opponents area, leaving them blinded and in the dark! :O
Next we have our utility. Definitely the easiest of these to configure, just think of something that would make normal, non-bending, vanilla MC much easier to do. For light, a passive where the player glows all the time would be pretty useful. Or alternately, a move that creates a hovering ball of light that follows you around above you. The possibilities here are huge.
Since you now have your safe 3, you now do a test mentally. "Could this sub-element stand in a fight and at least hold its ground for a while?" If the answer is a definite yes, this is too powerful. Tone things down. If a definite no, it's too weak. If an uncertain yes, you've hit gold. The elements are designed to be equal, and none more powerful than others.
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT.
I hope you find this tutorial useful <3
